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Blood transfusions found to harm some patients

By Rachel Nowak

“For the life of the flesh is in the blood. No soul of you shall eat blood.” So says the Bible’s book of Leviticus, and it is for this reason that Jehovah’s Witnesses shun blood transfusions. They do not, however, shun surgery. As long as surgeons use special techniques, Jehovah’s Witnesses can have surgery – including operations with the greatest potential for blood loss, such as open-heart surgery – without ever receiving a drop of someone else’s blood.

Now some surgeons and anaesthetists are questioning whether every patient shouldn’t get the same treatment. Over the past decade a number …